Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi sold for $450m: A look at some expensive paintings

Leonardo da Vinci’s "Salvator Mundi" on display at Christie's New York during a press preview for the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale to be held November 15, 2017..(AFP File Photo)

A 500-year-old painting believed to be by Leonardo da Vinci sold for $450.3 million in New York on Wednesday, blazing a new world record for the most expensive work of art sold at an auction, auction house Christie’s said.

“Salvator Mundi” or ‘Savior of the World’, which depicts Jesus Christ, more than doubled the previous record of $179.4 million paid for Pablo Picasso’s “The Women of Algiers (Version O)” in New York in 2015.

Here’s a look at some of the most expensive paintings ever sold:

Woman of Algiers (Version O), Pablo Picasso

Les Femmes d’Alger by Pablo Picasso, the Cubist who revolutionised modern art, was sold at an astronomical price of $179.4 million two years before. The 1950s painting, once owned by the American collectors Victor and Sally Ganz, was inspired by Picasso’s fascination with the 19th-century French artist Eugene Delacroix’s work ‘The Women of Algiers in their Apartment’.

Nu couché (Reclining nude), Amedeo Modigliani

Modigliani’s 1917-18 Reclining Nude was sold for $170.4 million in the same Christie’s auction in which Picasso’s piece made record sale.

Modigliani’s celebration of nudes began in 1916 and are influenced by Italian Renaissance representations of Venus and other idealised female figures, says Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Nafea Faa Ipoipo?, Paul Gauguin

‘When Will You Marry?’ by Paul Gauguin -- the painter who was once Vincent Van Gogh’s roommate at the iconic Yellow House in Arles, Provence -- was speculated to be the most expensive painting sold privately by a Swiss art collector for $300 million. The 1982 oil painting featuring two Tahitian women was believed to be bought by Qatar, reported The Guardian.

The oil nation of Qatar also purchased Paul Cezanne’s The Card Players painting privately in 2011 for a whopping $250 million. This post-Impressionist masterpiece showing two Provencal peasants playing cards is one of the four other paintings by Cezanne in the series.